Silhouette Studio Explained – Part 2

This is part two of Silhouette Studio Explained. In this post, I’ll talk about the next five icons on the left side; The draw function, the text icon, the notes icon, the eraser tool and the knife.

The draw function is the icon that looks like a pencil. It’s used for freehand drawing. The submenu for this icon is to draw freehand and the other is to draw in a smooth freehand (it will drop edit points as you draw and then smooth the line as you go. In the example below, I tried to draw the same shape using both tools. The one on the left is the freehand and the one on the right is smooth freehand.

Next in Line is the Text Tool. It’s the Capital A icon o the left side of the screen. It’s the A without the vertical line to the right of the A that’s on the right side of your screen. The two serve different functions within the text topic so please don’t confuse the two. This left icon is the one you use to tell the software that you actually want to type text and not use keyboard shortcuts. To use this tool, you’ll click on the A and then click on the mat where you’d like to start typing. As you type, the text you enter appears in a green box that expands to the right as you type and the characters are filled in using the default font (arial at 72 point). To change the font, highight the letters you just typed by grabbing the cursor at the end of the text (it’s somewhat hard to see because it’s very close to the right side of the box and drag it back to the left. Let go of the mouse when you’ve highlighted what you want to change and then click on the A icon on the right side of the screen. From that panel, you can change the font, the size, the spacing of the words, the spacing of the letters whether you want to bold, underline and italicize, the justification of the words within the box and the kerning.

The thing to note here is that if you want more than one line of text; be sure to put each text box in a separate line to make the spacing and lining up each row of text easier.

The notes tool is the latest tool we’ve been given from Silhouette. It allows you the option of placing a note within your design to keep information related to that design. I’ve found it helpful for things such as listing the font and size, where I found a particular picture, the size of the design, who I made it for; basically anything I might find useful. To use this tool, you only have to left click on the note icon and then left click wherever you’d like the note to be. Once you anchor the note, you be able to change the size and add and subtract info, but you will not be able to move the note around; so be mindful where you put it. At this point, the note is yellow with a gray border and (the color cannot be altered). You can add as many notes to your design as you need.

.A note with the font information.

A note that’s been clicked on to add additional information/to resize

The next tool is the eraser tool; and to be blunt, this tool has issues, and most people I know go out of their way to not use this tool at all. They will use all of the other tools, including the knife to avoid it until the bugs have been worked out. At this point, the best advice I can give is to just avoid it.

The last tool on the left side right now, is the knife tool. It comes in two variations that appear in the quick access toolbar across the top of your design space, solid and outline. If solid is chosen, when the knife is used and you choose to click on the Auto Apply option, the two parts that the knife cuts become two separate items and the software automatically closes the shape automatically, otherwise, if the Auto Apply box is not checked then you’ll have to click on the Apply button at the top of the quick access toolbar. If outline is chosen, the opposite happens. the line is drawn between the two parts, but they are not separate shapes.

The next option you have with the knife tool is the shape of the cut the knife makes. Depending on which edition of the software you have; your knife types will be different.

So there you have an explanation of the the last five icons on the left side.

As I’ve said before; please let me know if you have any questions, if you like the posts I’m writing, if there’s something you’d like me talk about or if you just want to say hello!